How to Perform Password Protect USB Drive Windows 11 without BitLocker

Scenario: Password protection for flash drive in Windows 11 Home version

USB flash drives are an efficient method for data storage and transmission. Nevertheless, they are susceptible to security risks as a result of their portability and removability. Consider the possibility that your USB flash drive is lost or in the wrong hands. Is your data secure? The response is predictable. Therefore, this is the point at which encryption becomes advantageous.

Encrypting a USB flash drive results in the device being secured, necessitating the entry of the appropriate password to access the data contained within. This article will now demonstrate how to encrypt USB flash drive.

How to encrypt USB drive with/without BitLocker

In this part, you'll see how to use Windows to protect your USB drive and how to try a professional encryption tool to employ BitLocker even on your Home PC for your flash drive encryption.

Option 1. Use BitLocker to go on a Windows 11 Pro/Enterprise/Education PC

Honestly, if you wish to use BitLocker to set password to protect your USB drive, you need to upgrade your Windows, or, solve the problem on a PC with higher edition installed.

Step 1: Inject the pen drive into the Windows 11 Pro computer and then go to This PC. Right-click on the pen drive and choose Show more options. Then click Turn on BitLocker from the context menu.

Step 2: After BitLocker starts, you can tick the option—Use a password to unlock the drive. Then input the password twice and click the Next button.

Step 3: Now, choose a way to save the recovery key. After that, click the Next button.

Step 4: Choose a way to encrypt the drive and then hit on the Next button.

Step 5: Select Compatible mode in Choose which encryption mode to use screen. Then tap on Next button to proceed.

Step 6: Click on Start encrypting to begin the process.

Option 2. Employ third-party tool to BitLocker USB drive on Windows 11 Home PC

In the absence of the BitLocker feature in Windows Home, how can one encrypt critical files in the Home edition of Windows 11 or 10? Rest assured, there is a partition manager known as AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional that will satisfy your requirements.

It enables the effortless and rapid activation of BitLocker drive encryption in all versions of Windows 11/10/8/7, including the Windows Home edition. Please obtain the demo version of this software to observe its functionality.

Step1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant. Click the "Tools" main tab and select "BitLocker".

Step 2. All drives on the system will be displayed, including operating system drives, fixed data drives, and removable drives. Please find the partition you would like to encrypt BitLocker and click the "Turn on BitLocker" option. (Here, we take the drive D: as an example.)

Tip: It only supports encrypting NTFS partitions. Other partition file systems, for example, FAT or FAT32 cannot be encrypted.

Step 3. Please set and confirm a password to encrypt the drive and click "Next".

Step 4. Select a way to back up your recovery key. You can either select "Save to a file" or "Print the recovery key".

Step 5. If you select "Save to a file", please choose a location on your PC to save the recovery key.

Then, please click the "Next" button to start the encryption process.

Step 6. The encryption process might take time to encrypt the drive. Before the process is finished, please do not terminate the program, remove the drive, or turn off the power. Once the encryption process is finished, please click "Completed". Finally, the drive is BitLocker encrypted.

▶ To disable BitLocker via this tool, you can follow the steps:

Step 1. Find the encrypted drive you would like to decrypt and click the option "Turn off BitLocker".

Step 2. There are 2 ways available to decrypt the drive: Use password to decrypt the drive and Use recovery key to decrypt the drive. Please select either way as per your need.

If you select "Use a password to decrypt the drive", please enter the right password and then click the "Decrypt" button.

If you select "Use a recovery key to decrypt the drive", please enter the recovery key saved in the TXT file or printed when you encrypted the drive, and then click the "Decrypt" button.

Step 3. Then, the decryption process will start and it might take time to decrypt the drive. Once the decryption process is finished, please click "Completed". Finally, the BitLocker on the drive is decrypted.

Ending lines

If you want to use password to protect USB drive on Windows 11 without BitLocker, except choosing another Windows OS edition, AOMEI Partition Assistant is also a foolproof solution. Besides USB encryption, this multifunctional disk and partition managing tool can help you clone disk, convert disk from MBR to GPT without data loss, recover lost data, clean junk files, and so on.